rees have grown
old, and their rough boles measure a yard through their diameter,
they are no longer beautiful, but they have a sad solemnity all their
own, too full of meaning to require the heart's comment to be framed
in words. Below, all their earthward-looking branches are sapless and
shattered, splintered by the weight of many winters' snows; above,
they are still green and full of life, but their summits overtop all
the deciduous trees around them, and in their companionship with
heaven they are alone. On these the lightning loves to fall. One such
Mr. Bernard saw,--or rather, what had been one such; for the bolt had
torn the tree like an explosion from within, and the ground was
strewed all around the broken stump with flakes of rough bark and
strips and chips of shivered wood, into which the old tree had been
rent by the bursting rocket from the thunder-cloud.

----The master had struck up The Mountain obliquely from the western
side of the Dudley mansion-house. In this way he ascended until he
reached a point many hundred feet above the level of the plain, and
commanding all the country beneath and around. Almost at his feet he
saw the mansion-house, the chimney standing out of the middle of the
roof, or rather, like a black square hole in it,--the trees almost
directly over their stems, the fences as lines, the whole nearly as
an architect would draw a ground-plan of the house and the inclosures
round it. It frightened him to see how the huge masses of rock and
old forest-growths hung over the home below. As he descended a little
and drew near the ledge of evil name, he was struck with the
appearance of a long narrow fissure that ran parallel with it and
above it for many rods, not seemingly of very old standing,--for
there were many fibres of roots which had evidently been snapped
asunder when the rent took place, and some of which were still
succulent in both separated portions.

Mr. Bernard had made up his mind, when he set forth, not to come back
before he had examined the dreaded ledge. He had half persuaded
himself that it was scientific curiosity. He wished to examine the
rocks, _to see what flowers grew there_, and perhaps to pick up an
adventure in the zooelogical line; for he had on a pair of high, stout
boots, and he carried a stick in his hand, which was forked at one
extremity, so as to be very convenient to hold down a _crotalus_
with, if he should happen to encounter one. He knew the aspect o